<p>MomofWildChild - huge Jackson Browne fan here. You could name about 20 songs that have incredible lyrics.</p>
<p>My favorite JB line…</p>
<p>Don’t confront me with my failures,
I have not forgotten them.</p>
<p>MomofWIldChild,</p>
<p>LOVE that song! </p>
<p>I wanted to add two favorite song lines:</p>
<p>“There’s a splinter in your eye, it reads react” – Harborcoat by R.E.M.</p>
<p>“Saw things clearer once you were in my rearview mirror” – Rearview Mirror by Pearl Jam</p>
<p>Nothing by Lennon-McCarthy?</p>
<p>There are places i’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends i still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life i’ve loved them all</p>
<p>But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When i think of love as something new
Though i know i’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know i’ll often stop and think about them
In my life i love you more</p>
<p>If we’re doing old songs - I’d go for Greensleeves.</p>
<p>But this is one that gets me every time. The lyrics are simple, and the tune will really pull on your heart strings. Guy Clark most underrated songwriter ever.</p>
<p>Dublin Blues</p>
<p>I wish I was in Austin
In the Chili Parlour Bar
Drinkin’ Mad Dog Margaritas
And not carin’ where you are</p>
<p>But here I sit in Dublin
Just rollin’ cigarettes
Holdin’ back and chokin’ back
The shakes with every breath</p>
<p>Chorus
Forgive me all my anger
Forgive me all my faults
There’s no need to forgive me
For thinkin’ what I thought
I loved you from the git go
I’ll love you till I die
I loved you on the Spanish steps
The day you said goodbye</p>
<p>I am just a poor boy
Work’s my middle name
If money was a reason
I would not be the same</p>
<p>I’ll stand up and be counted
I’ll face up to the truth
I’ll walk away from trouble
But I can’t walk away from you</p>
<p>I have been to Fort Worth
I have been to Spain
I have been to proud
To come in out of the rain</p>
<p>I have seen the David
I’ve seen the Mona Lisa too
I have heard Doc Watson
Play Columbus Stockade Blues</p>
<p>Taylor Swift-The Best Day(for all those moms out there)
I also have a guilty love for her Romeo and Juliet-“You were Romeo,
I was the scarlet letta
And my daddy said stay away from Juliet…”
But I know it’s pure doggerel.</p>
<p>love old irish songs…
Carrickfergus</p>
<p>I wish I was in Carrickfergus
Only for nights in Ballygrand
I would swim over the deepest ocean
The deepest ocean for my love to find</p>
<p>But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over
Neither have I wings to fly
If I could find me a handsome boatsman
To ferry me over to my love and die</p>
<p>My childhood days bring back sad reflections
Of happy times spent so long ago
My childhood friends and my own relations
Have all passed on now like melting snow</p>
<p>But I’ll spend my days in endless roaming
Soft is the grass, my bed is free
Ah, to be back now in Carrickfergus
On that long road down to the sea</p>
<p>I’ll spend my days in endless roaming
Soft is the grass, my bed is free
But I am sick now, and my days are numbered
Come all you young men and lay me down</p>
<p>I. Miss. Dan.</p>
<p>Sometimes in the night I feel it
Near as my next breath
and yet, untouchable
Silently the past comes
stealing
Like the taste of some forbidden
sweet.
Along the walls; in shadowed
rafters
Moving like a thought through
haunted atmospheres
Muted cries and echoed laughter
Banished dreams that never
sank in sleep.
Lost in love and
Found in reason
Questions that the mind can find
no answers for
Ghostly eyes
Conspire treason
As they gather just outside the door…
Every ghost that calls upon us
Brings another measure
in the mystery
Death is there
To keep us honest
And constantly remind us
we are free.
Down the ancient corridors
And through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of days
That we left behind.
Down the ancient corridors
And through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of dreams
That we left behind.</p>
<p>David Crosby</p>
<p>Got out of town on a boat, going to Southern islands.
Sailing a reach before a following sea.
She was making for the trades on the outside, and the downhill run to Papeete.</p>
<p>Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas,
we got eighty feet of the waterline, nicely making way.
In a noisy bar in Avalon, I tried to call you.
But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away.</p>
<p>Think about how many times I have fallen. Spirits are using me, larger voices calling.
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world, looking for that woman-girl who knows love can endure.
And you know it will, and you know it will.</p>
<p>When you see the Southern Cross for the first time,
you understand now why you came this way.
Cause the truth you might be running from is so small.
But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day.
So I’m sailing for tomorrow, my dreams are a dying.
And my love is an anchor tied to you, tied with a silver chain.
I have my ship and all her flags are a flying.
She is all that I have left and music is her name.</p>
<p>Think about how many times I have fallen. Spirits are using me, larger voices calling.
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world, looking for that woman-girl who knows love can endure.
And you know it will, and you know it will.</p>
<p>So we cheated and we lied and we tested
and we never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do.
You will survive being bested.
Somebody fine will come along, make me forget about loving you at the Southern Cross.</p>
<p>OldBatesieDoc: When the tsunami of Taylor Swift publicity hit last fall, I had never heard of her before. She is one heck of a lyricist, agreed. I think Romeo is a little trite (but that 16th-note hesitation the last time she sings “Baby just say yes”: killer!); but “Our Song” knocked my socks off the first time I listened to it.</p>
<p>marite: “Full Fathom Five” IS a song. I don’t know what the provenance of the music is, but it was written as a song and sung in Globe productions of The Tempest. And “Jerusalem” isn’t just a Socialist anthem. My mother’s prep school used it as its alma mater as far back as the 1920s (and no one there was remotely socialist), and my kids’ former private school also uses it. I don’t think Blake intended it to be a song, though.</p>
<p>This is one of my favorites. I learned it as a campfire song when I was a camp counselor for 4 summers in the 70s and I just heard it on the radio last week. Brings back memories.</p>
<p>Today</p>
<p>(Words and Music by Minstrels’ leader Randy Sparks)
Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
Ere I forget all the joy that is mine today.</p>
<p>Now I’ll be a dandy, and I’ll be a rover.
You’ll know who I am by the song that I sing.
I’ll feast at your table, I’ll sleep in your clover.
Who cares what tomorrow shall bring.</p>
<p>I can’t be contented with yesterday’s glory.
I can’t live on promises, winter to spring.
Today is my moment, and now is my story.
I’ll laugh and I’ll cry and I’ll sing.</p>
<p>Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
Ere I forget all the joy that is mine today.</p>
<p>Hubert Parry put Blake’s poem to music in 1916. The Labour Party has Methodist roots, so Jerusalem gets played at its meetings. We used to hear it quite often when we lived in Britain. But it is not exclusive to the Labour Party; in fact both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats also sing it as do non-political groups.</p>
<p>Hank Williams Jr: </p>
<p>“I’d love to spit some beechnut in that dude’s eye”</p>
<p>from Country Boy Can Survive</p>
<p>Favorite cheating lyric from Moe Bandy -</p>
<p>I just threw my last bottle at the jukebox
When I heard that woman singin’ darling let’s go all the way
I just found out my woman is the devil
I just started hatin’ cheatin’ songs today</p>
<p>With due respect to the OP:</p>
<p>Credit for the lyrics to “Me and Bobby Mcgee” goes to Kris Kristofferson, who really wrote some beautiful stuff including</p>
<p>Well I woke up Sunday morning
with no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
and the beer I had for breakfast
wasn’t bad so I had one more for dessert
then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes
and found my cleanest dirty shirt
it’s the one I’m wearin’
and I shaved my face and combed my hair
and stumbled down the stairs to meet the day</p>
<p>Chorus:
On the Sunday morning sidewalks
wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘cause there is something in a Sunday
that makes a body feel alone
and there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
half as lonesome as the sound
on the sleepin’ city side walks
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down</p>
<p>Short and sweet - Merle Haggard the Great sang “that’s the music God made” in THAT’S THE WAY LOVE GOES</p>
<p>I’ve been throwing horseshoes over my left shoulder
I’ve spent most all my life searching for that four leaf clover
Yet you run with me chasing my rainbows
Honey I love you too and that’s the way love goes</p>
<p>That’s the way love goes babe that’s the music God made
For the whole wide world to sing it never gets old it grows
Losing makes me sorry you say honey now don’t you worry
Don’t you know I love you too and that’s the way love goes</p>
<p>by Lefty Frizzel</p>
<p>Roger Waters’ lyrics to “Dogs” by Pink Floyd are deeply moving to me. I think that song should be required listening for anyone who thinks that corporate ladder-climbing and power-grabbing are their ticket to happiness.</p>
<p>I love so many lyrics that I could fill up this whole thread. I love Taylor Swift’s writing and Alan Jackson’s, too. And Neil Young. And on and on.</p>
<p>So cool to read these song lyrics that are poems to music!</p>
<p>UCLA Band Mom – never saw the words to Soft Parade before – knocked my socks off! Wow!</p>
<p>Memories brought back by this thread - but I think I would add Jackson Browne’s After the Deluge, For a Dancer, and Late for the Sky.</p>
<p>I sang that at Girl Scout camp back in the 70s too! Lovely tune. The song I really like that we sang that you never hear any more is Phil Och’s Power and Glory.</p>
<p>Come and take a walk with me thru this green and growing land
Walk thru the meadows and the mountains and the sand
Walk thru the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk thru the sun and walk thru the rain</p>
<p>Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all (on us all)</p>
<p>From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new
Texas and Ohio and the California shore
Tell me, who could ask for more?</p>
<p>Yet she’s only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand</p>
<p>But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate
They twist away our freedom & they twist away our fate
Fear is their weapon and treason is their cry
We can stop them if we try</p>